Rwandan poll on van der Poel: will the Dutchman miss out on a major title à la Van Avermaet at the World Cycling Championships in Rwanda?

Kigali is, of course, a special championship. A survey in the capital of Rwanda reveals that only the Olympic road races of 2008 (Beijing), 2016 (Rio de Janeiro), and 2021 (Tokyo) can approximate the conditions of this World Championships: hot, relatively high humidity, and smog.

“It's been called the toughest World Championships ever,” Thomas said in conversation with colleague Luke Rowe on his podcast. “Guys like van der Poel and Mads Pedersen aren't going. That's somewhat of a disappointment. You wouldn't want to make it so tough that it prevents van der Poel and Pedersen from participating in a World Championships.”

"I saw on Instagram that Van der Poel, Pogacar, and Evenepoel have won all the major one-day races in the last three years, except for Philipsen's Milan-Sanremo. One of them isn't going because it's too tough, but Van der Poel has already come third in Liège...," Thomas analyses. Van der Poel is currently on holiday in the United States after a long and exhausting season that ended with the Mountain Bike World Championships.

“If he's in top form, why wouldn't he be able to get over those hills? It reminds me of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Everyone said how tough it was, and Peter Sagan went mountain biking, but who won? Greg Van Avermaet,” says the Welshman, who himself finished eleventh at the Copacabana.

Dutch national coach Koos Moerenhout had to deal with the withdrawal of the world champion from Glasgow at an early stage. "If we had only ridden the laps, Mathieu might have been able to do it. However, Mount Kigali really makes it stand out. Guys like Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogacar know they can't spare him until the final and would do everything they can to drop him. ‘

"I rode the test event in Beijing in 2007, when I was still a promising young rider," says Poels, who, just like at the Games a year later, was sprayed with water every lap to keep his temperature down. "It was hot and humid there, too, but that was so long ago. Who won? I don't really remember." We help him out: Italian Gabriele Bosisio took the victory, Vincenzo Nibali and Cadel Evans finished fifth and seventh, and Poels himself came in sixteenth—two places behind Thijs Zonneveld—as a 19-year-old.

Anna van der Breggen won a gold medal in Brazil in 2016 after Annemiek van Vleuten's well-known crash in the descent, and she also understands the link, including the caveat. “In terms of humidity, it may be a bit similar to Rio, but there it felt very wet. That's not necessarily the case here. I don't sweat excessively, so the heat isn't too bad. Here, it's more a combination of different things.”

Serge Pauwels, current coach of the Belgian national team, helped Van Avermaet win gold that year. "Maybe you can compare it to Rio, but of course, it wasn't at altitude. It's actually very simple: in Europe, there is no 260-kilometer race above 1,400 meters. Every effort you make causes you to go into overdrive much faster. It's going to be very tough. I don't think it can be compared to anything else: it's tougher than anything we've seen in recent years."

Then there's Louis Vervaeke, who competed in the French-dominated test event in Rio in 2015. "I think it was pretty similar. There was a significant amount of pollution, and the weather was hot and humid. I had a similar feeling here, too, although the final climb in Rio de Janeiro was a lot tougher than the one in Kigali. That was a very tough obstacle. I also recall that if you exceed the limit, you have to take it easy. I went deep once, and then I couldn't get myself back on track."

"I think that's something you'll see here, too. As a top rider, you have to know your body very well, and you can't just go on a wild attack, but Remco Evenepoel is very good at that. You can see that when he rides away on his own, he can pace himself very well. He rarely falters,’ said Evenepoel's teammate at Soudal Quick-Step.

Evenepoel himself failed at the 2021 Games on the Mikuni Pass, a similar wide obstacle to Mount Kigali. “It was also hot in Japan, but the humidity was much higher there. Perhaps the conditions here in Kigali are closer to a hot Vuelta stage,” says the Belgian, who is not worried about Sunday.

To return to the beginning: Is van der Poel missing out on an opportunity similar to Van Avermaet-Rio 2016? “Purely on the local circuit, it could be possible, but it's also 270 kilometers in difficult weather conditions. I completely understand his decision not to go,” said Moerenhout. “It's about the riders who are there. If he had been there, we would have made a plan that might have suited him. However, other teams would also have adjusted their tactics accordingly.” Case closed.